Setting up Your Camera's Color Space

The Adobe Photoshop CC Book for Digital Photographers (2017 Release)

Although there are entire books written on the subject of color management, in Setting Up this chapter we’re going to focus on just one thing—getting what comes out of your color inkjet printer to match what you see onscreen. That’s what it’s all about, Your Camera’s and if you follow the steps in this chapter, you’ll get prints that match your screen. Color Space We’re going to start by setting up your camera’s color space, so you’ll get the best results from screen to print. Note: You can skip this if you only shoot in RAW.

Step One: If you shoot in JPEG or TIFF mode (or JPEG + Raw), you’ll want to set your camera’s color space to match what you’re going to use in Photoshop for your color space (to get consistent color from your camera to Photoshop to your printer, you’ll want everybody speaking the same language, right?). I recommend you change your camera’s color space from its default sRGB to Adobe RGB (1998), which is a better color space for photographers whose final image will come from a color inkjet printer. RAFAEL CONCEPCION RAFAEL

Step Two: On a Nikon DSLR, you’ll usually find the Color Space control under the Shooting Menu (as shown here at left). On most Canon DSLRs, you’ll find the Color Space control under the Shooting 2 menu (as shown here on the right). Change the space to Adobe RGB. If you’re not shooting Nikon or Canon, it’s time to dig up your owner’s manual (or, ideally, download it in PDF format from the manufacturer’s website) to find out how to make the switch to Adobe RGB (1998). Again, if you’re shooting in RAW, you can skip this altogether.

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This is one of those topics that tend to make people crazy, and since there is no Official Board of Resolution Standards, this is the type of thing that gets ar- gued endlessly in online discussion forums. That being said, I take the word of my friend and fellow photographer Dan Steinhardt from Epson (the man behind Resolution the popular Epson Print Academy), who lives this stuff day in and day out (Dan for Printing and I did an online training class on printing and this was just about the first topic we covered, because for so many, this is a real stumbling block). Here’s what we do:

Step One: To see what your current photo’s resolution is, go under the Image menu and choose Image Size (or press Command- Option-I [PC: Ctrl-Alt-I]). Ideally, for printing to a color inkjet printer, I like to be at 240 ppi (pixels per inch), but I often print at 200 ppi, and will go as low as 180 ppi (but 180 ppi is absolutely the lowest I’ll go. Anything below that and, depending on the image, you’ll start to visibly lose print SCOTT KELBY quality). So, I guess the good news here is: you don’t need as much resolution as you might think (even for a printing press). Here’s an image taken with a 12-megapixel camera and you can see that at 240 ppi, I can print an image that is nearly 12x18".

Step Two: Here’s the resolution from a 6-megapixel camera. At 240 ppi I can only print an 8x12.5" image. So, to make it larger, I turn off the Resample Image checkbox, type in 200 as my new resolution, and then I’d have an image size of 10x15" (with no loss of quality). If I lower it to 180 ppi (as low as I would ever go), then I get the print up to a finished size of 11x16.75" (nearly that of a 12-megapixel camera), and I SCOTT KELBY did it all without losing quality (because I turned off the Resample Image checkbox, but before you do this, you need to read about resizing in Chapter 4 in the book).

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Photoshop’s default color space is sRGB (some pros refer to it as “stupid RGB”), which is fine for photos going on the web, but your printer can print a wider range Setting Up of colors than sRGB (particularly in the blues and greens). So, if you work in sRGB, Photoshop’s you’re essentially leaving out those rich, vivid colors you could be seeing. That’s why we either change our color space to Adobe RGB (1998) if you’re shooting in JPEG or Color Space TIFF, which is better for printing those images, or ProPhoto RGB if you shoot in RAW or work with Photohsop Lightroom. Here’s how to set up both:

Step One: Before we do this, I just want to reiterate that you only want to make this change if your final print will be output to your own color inkjet. If you’re sending your images out to an outside lab for prints, you should probably stay in sRGB—both in the camera and in Photoshop—as most labs are set up to handle sRGB files. Your best bet: ask your lab which color space they prefer. Okay, now on to Photoshop: go under the Edit menu and choose Color Settings (as shown here).

Step Two: This brings up the Color Settings dialog. By default, it uses a group of settings called “North America General Purpose 2.” Now, does anything about the phrase “General Purpose” sound like it would be a good space for pro photographers? Didn’t think so. The tip-off is that under Working Spaces, the RGB space is set to sRGB IEC61966–2.1 (which is the long- hand technical name for what we simply call sRGB). In short, you don’t want to use this group of settings. They’re for goobers—not for you (unless of course, you are a goober, which I doubt because you bought this book, and they don’t sell this book to goobers. It’s in each book- store’s contract).

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Step Three: To get a preset group of settings that’s better for photographers, from the Settings pop-up menu, choose North America Prepress 2. Don’t let it throw you that we’re using prepress settings here—they work great for color inkjet printing because it uses the Adobe RGB (1998) color space. It also sets up the appropriate warning dialogs to help you keep your color management plan in action when opening photos from outside sources or other cameras (more on this on the next page).

Step Four: If you’re shooting in RAW exclusively, or using Lightroom (Adobe’s awesome application for photographers), then you’ll want to change your color space in Photoshop to ProPhoto RGB to get the best prints from your RAW images (plus, if you use Lightroom, you’ll wind up moving images back and forth between Lightroom and Photoshop from time to time, and since Lightroom’s na- tive color space is ProPhoto RGB, you’ll want to keep everything consistent. While you might use Lightroom for your JPEG or TIFF images, there’s really no advan- tage to choosing ProPhoto RGB for them). You change Photoshop’s Color Space to PhotoPro RGB in the Color Settings dialog (just choose it from the RGB menu, as shown here). That way, when you open a RAW photo in Photoshop (or import a file from Lightroom), everything stays in the same consistent color space and if you wind up bringing an image from Lightroom over to Photoshop, and end up printing it in Photoshop (instead of jump- ing back to Lightroom for printing), you’ll get better results.

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Step Five: About those warnings that help you keep your color management on track: Let’s say you open a JPEG photo, and your camera was set to shoot in Adobe RGB (1998), and your Photoshop is set the same way. The two color spaces match, so no warnings appear. But, if you open a JPEG photo you took six months ago, it will probably still be in sRGB, which doesn’t match your Photoshop working space. That’s a mismatch, so you’d get the warning dialog shown here, telling you this. Luckily it gives you the choice of how to handle it. I recommend converting that document’s colors to your current working space (as shown here).

Step Six: You can have Photoshop do this conversion automatically anytime it finds a mismatch. Just reopen the Color Settings dialog, and under Color Management Policies, in the RGB pop-up menu, change your default setting to Convert to Work ing RGB (as shown here). For Profile Mis matches, turn off the Ask When Opening checkbox. Now when you open sRGB photos, they will automatically update to match your current working space. Nice!

Step Seven: Okay, so what if a friend emails you a photo, you open it in Photoshop, and the photo doesn’t have any color profile at all? Well, once that photo is open in Photoshop, you can convert that “un- tagged” image to Adobe RGB (1998) by going under the Edit menu and choosing Assign Profile. When the Assign Profile dialog appears, click on the Profile radio button, ensure Adobe RGB (1998) is selected in the pop-up menu, then click OK.

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When we apply sharpening, we apply it so it looks good on our computer screen, right? But when you actually make a print, a lot of that sharpening that looks fine on a 72- or 96- dpi computer screen gets lost on a high-resolution print at 240 ppi. Sharpening Because the sharpening gets reduced when we make a print, we have to sharpen so our photo looks a bit too sharp onscreen, but then looks perfect when it prints. for Printing Here’s how I apply sharpening for images I’m going to print:

Step One: Start by doing a trick my buddy Shelly Katz shared with me: duplicate the Back ground layer (by pressing Command-J [PC: Ctrl-J]) and do your print sharpening on this duplicate layer (that way, you don’t mess with the already sharpened original image on the Background layer). Name this new layer “Sharpened for Print,” then go under the Filter menu, under Sharpen, and choose Unsharp Mask. For most 240 ppi images, I apply these settings: Amount 120; Radius 1; Threshold 3. Click OK. SCOTT KELBY

Step Two: Next, reapply the Unsharp Mask filter with the same settings by pressing Command-F (PC: Ctrl-F). Then, at the top of the Layers panel, change the layer blend mode to Luminosity (so the sharpening is only applied to the detail of the photo, and not the color), then use the Opacity slider to control how much sharpening is applied. Start at 50% and see if it looks a little bit oversharpened. If it looks like a little bit too much, stop—you want it to look a little oversharpened. If you think it’s way too much, lower the opacity to around 35% and re-evaluate. When it looks right (a little too sharp), make a test print. My guess is that you’ll want to raise the opacity up a little higher, because it won’t be as sharp as you thought.

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Besides printing images on my own color inkjet printer, I also send a decent amount Sending Your Images of my print work out to a photo lab (I use Mpix as my lab) for a number of reasons— to Be Printed at like if I want metallic prints, or I want the image mounted, matted, and/or framed with glass, or I want a print that’s larger than I can print in-house. Here’s how to a Photo Lab prep your images for uploading to be printed at a photo lab:

Step One: First, contact the photo lab where you’re sending your image, and ask what color profile they want you to use. Chances are they are going to want you to convert your image to sRGB color mode. I know this flies in the face of what we do when we print our own images, but I know a number of big, high-quality photo labs (Mpix included) that all request that you convert your images to sRGB first, and for their workflow, it works. If they don’t request you convert to sRGB, they may have you download a color profile they’ve created for you, and you’ll use it the same way as you’ll assign sRGB in the next step.

Step Two: With your image open in Photoshop, go under the Edit menu, choose Convert to Profile, and you’ll see the image’s current color profile at the top of the dialog (here, my image is a RAW image, and so it’s set to ProPhoto RGB). Under Destination Space, from the Profile pop-up menu, choose sRGB IEC61966-2.1. If you downloaded a profile from your lab, you’ll choose that instead (more on where to save downloads on page 14). Click OK, and don’t be surprised if the image looks pretty much the same. In fact, be happy if it does, but at least now it’s set up to get the best results from your photo lab.

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If you really want what comes out of your printer to match what you see onscreen, then I don’t want to have to be the one to tell you this, but…you absolutely, positively have to calibrate your monitor using a hardware calibrator. The good You Have to Calibrate news is that today it’s an absolutely simple, totally automated process. The bad Your Monitor Before news is that you have to buy a hardware calibrator. With hardware calibration, it’s measuring your actual monitor and building an accurate profile for the You Go Any Further exact monitor you’re using, and yes—it makes that big a difference.

Step One: I use Datacolor’s Spyder4ELITE hardware color calibrator (around $169 street price), because it’s simple, affordable, and a lot of the pros I know have moved over to it. So, I’m going to use it as an example here, but it’s not necessary to get this same one, because they all work fairly similarly. You start by installing the software that comes with the Spyder4ELITE. Then, plug the Spyder4ELITE sensor into your computer’s USB port and launch the software, which brings up the main window (seen here). You follow the “wizard,” which asks you a couple of simple questions (stuff like, “Is this the first time you’ve calibrated your monitor using Spyder4ELITE?” Or, maybe, “What’s the capital of Nebraska?”), and then it does the rest.

Step Two: Start by clicking the Next button in the bottom right, and the window you see here will appear. If you’re new to calibrat- ing your monitor, I recommend using the Step-by-Step Assistant (which is already selected by default), so at this point just click the Next button again.

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Step Three: The next screen asks you which type of calibration you want to do. Are you going to just update an older calibration you did previously with the Spyder4ELITE (then you would choose the ReCAL radio button), or do you just want to check to see how accurate your current calibration is (CheckCAL), or are you doing this for the first time (which you are, so you’d click the FullCAL radio button, as shown here)? Then, just click the Next button, because you’re going to leave all the pop-up menus here at their default recommended settings.

Step Four: The next screen asks you to put the Spyder unit on your monitor, which means you drape the sensor over your monitor so it sits flat against it and the cord hangs over the back. It shows you exactly where to place it (the two blue arrows you see beside its outline actually flash on/off, so you can’t possibly miss where it goes). The sensor comes with a counterweight you can attach to the cord, so you can position the sensor ap- proximately in the center of your screen without it slipping down. Once the sensor is in position over your screen, click the Next button, sit back, and relax. You’ll see the software conduct a series of onscreen tests, using gray, white, and various color swatches, as shown here.

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Step Five: This testing only goes on for a few minutes (at least, that’s all it took for my laptop), and then it’s done. It asks you to name your profile (it puts a default name in place for you), so enter a name, and then click the Save button. Below that is a pop-up menu where you can choose when you want an automatic reminder to “Recalibrate your monitor” to pop up on your screen. The default choice is 2 Weeks (so please don’t tell anyone that I actually set mine to 1 Month). Make your choice and then click the Next button.

Step Six: Now you get to see the usually shock- ing before/after. Click on the Switch button at the bottom right and you can switch back and forth between your now fully calibrated monitor and your uncalibrated monitor. It’s at that moment you say, ”Ohhhhhh…that’s why my prints never match my screen.” Well, it’s certainly one part of the puz- zle, but without this one critical piece in place, you don’t have a chance with the rest, so you did the right thing. Click Next one last time, and then click the Quit button in the Profile Overview screen.

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When you buy a color inkjet printer and install the printer driver that comes with it, The Other Secret to it basically lets Photoshop know what kind of printer is being used, and that’s about it. But to get pro-quality results, you need a color profile for your printer based on Getting Pro-Quality the exact type of paper you’ll be printing on. Most inkjet paper manufacturers now Prints That Match create custom profiles for their papers, and you can usually download them free from their websites. Does this really make that big a difference? Ask any pro. Your Screen Here’s how to find and install these profiles:

Step One: Your first step is to go to the website of the company that makes the paper you’re going to be printing on and search for their downloadable color profiles for your printer. I use the term “search” because they’re usually not in a really obvious place. I use two Epson printers—a Stylus Photo R2880 and a Stylus Pro 3880—and I generally print on Epson paper. When I installed the 3880’s printer driver, I was tickled to find that it also installed custom color profiles for all Epson papers (this is rare), but my R2880 (like most printers) doesn’t. So, the first stop would be Epson’s website, where you’d click on the Printers & All-in-Ones link under Get Drivers & Support (as shown here). Note: Even if you’re not an Epson user, still follow along (you’ll see why).

Step Two: Once you get to Drivers & Support, find your particular printer in the list. Click on that link, and on the next page, click on Drivers & Downloads (choose Windows or Macintosh). On that page is a link to the printer’s Premium ICC Profiles page.

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Step Three: When you click that link, a page appears with a list of Mac and Windows ICC profiles for Epson’s papers and printers. I primarily print on two papers: (1) Epson’s Ultra Premium Photo Paper Luster, and (2) Epson’s Velvet Fine Art paper. So, I’d download the ICC profiles for them under Glossy Papers (as shown here) and Fine Art Papers (at the bottom of the window). They download onto your computer, and you just double-click the installer for each one, and they’re added to your list of pro files in Photoshop (I’ll show how to choose them in the Print dialog a little later). That’s it—you download them, double-click to install, and they’ll be waiting for you in Photoshop’s print dialog. Easy enough. But what if you’re not using Epson paper? Or if you have a different printer, like a Canon or an HP?

Step Four: We’ll tackle the different paper issue first (because they’re tied together). I mentioned earlier that I usually print on Epson papers. I say usually because sometimes I want a final print that fits in a 16x20" standard pre-made frame, without having to cut or trim the photo. In those cases, I use Red River Paper’s 16x20" Ultra Pro Satin instead (which is very much like Epson’s Ultra Premium Luster, but it’s already pre-cut to 16x20"). So, even though you’re printing on an Epson printer, now you’d go to Red River Paper’s site (www.redriverpaper.com) to find their color profiles for my other printer—the Epson 3880. (Remember, profiles come from the company that makes the paper.) On the Red River Paper homepage is a link for Premium Photographic Inkjet Papers, so click on that.

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Step Five: Once you click that link, things get easier, because on the left side of the next page (under Helpful Info) is a clear, direct link right to their free downloadable color profiles (as seen here). Making profiles easy to find like this is extremely rare (it’s almost too easy—it must be a trap, right?). So, click on that Color Profiles link and it takes you right to the profiles for Epson printers, as seen in Step Six (how sweet is that?).

Step Six: Under the section named Epson Wide Format, there’s a direct link to the Epson Pro 3880 (as shown here), but did you also notice that there are ICC Color profiles for the Canon printers, as well? See, the process is the same for other printers, but be aware: although HP and Canon both make pro-quality photo printers, Epson had the pro market to itself for quite a while, so while Epson profiles are created by most major paper manufacturers, you may not always find paper profiles for HP and Canon printers. As you can see at Red River, they widely support Epson, and many Canon profiles are there, too, but there are only a few for HP. That doesn’t mean this won’t change, but as of the writing of this book, that’s the reality. Speaking of change—the look and navi- gation of websites change pretty regu- larly, so if these sites look different when you visit them, don’t freak out. Okay, you can freak out, but just a little.

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Step Seven: Although profiles from Epson’s website come with an installer, in Red River’s case (and in the case of many other paper man ufacturers), you just get the profile (shown here) and instructions, so you install it yourself (don’t worry—it’s easy). On a PC, just Right-click on the profile and choose Install Profile. Easy enough. On a Mac, go to your hard disk, open your Library folder, and open your ColorSync folder, where you’ll see a Profiles folder. Just drag the file in there and you’re set (in Photo shop CC, you don’t even have to restart Photoshop—it automatically updates).

Step Eight: Now, you’ll access your profile by choosing Print from Photoshop’s File menu. In the Print dialog, change the Color Handling pop-up menu to Photoshop Manages Color. Then, click on the Printer Profile pop-up menu, and your new color profile(s) will appear (as shown here). In our example, I’m printing to an Epson 3880 using Red River’s Ultra Pro Satin paper, so that’s what I’m choosing here as my printer profile (it’s named RR UPSat Ep3880.icc). More on using these color profiles later in this chapter.

TIP: Creating Your Own Profiles You can also pay an outside service to create a custom profile for your printer. You print a test sheet (which they pro- vide), overnight it to them, and they’ll use an expensive colorimeter to mea- sure your test print and create a custom profile. The catch: it’s only good for that printer, on that paper, with that ink. If anything changes, your custom profile is just about worthless. Of course, you could do your own personal printer profiling (using something like one of X-Rite’s i1 Solutions), so you can re-profile each time you change paper or inks. It’s really deter- mined by your fussiness/time/money factor (if you know what I mean).

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Okay, so at this point, you’ve set Photoshop to the proper color space for the type of photo you’re going to be printing (RAW, JPEG, TIFF, etc., see page 3), you’ve Making the Print hardware calibrated your monitor (see page 8), and you’ve even downloaded a (Finally, It All printer profile for the exact printer model and style of paper you’re printing on. In short—you’re there. Luckily, you only have to do all that stuff once—now we can Comes Together) just sit back and print. Well, pretty much. Also, back in CS6, Adobe added some nice tweaks to the Photoshop Print Settings dialog, which we’ll cover here.

Step One: Go under Photoshop’s File menu and choose Print (as shown here) or just press Command-P (PC: Ctrl-P).

Step Two: When the Photoshop Print Settings dialog appears, let’s choose your printer first. At the top right, choose the printer you want to print to from the Printer pop-up menu (here, I’m going to be printing to my Epson Stylus Pro 3880). You can choose your page orientation by clicking on the portrait and landscape Layout icons at the bottom of the Printer Setup section (as shown here). By the way, if you’ve used this dialog before in previous versions of Photoshop, you’ll be happy to know that now you can actually resize the dialog to any size you’d like by clicking on the bottom-right corner and dragging it out. Here I dragged it out to the right, so I could see my preview much larger, and it was at that moment that I realized I wasn’t seeing the full image (it’s not cropped that tight to the

top of her head). SCOTT KELBY

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Step Three: If you want your image to fit fully on the page, scroll down to the Position and Size section and turn on the Scale to Fit Media checkbox (as shown here) and it scales the image down in size, so the entire image fits on the page without being cropped (now you can see the rest of her hat, and the image is much wider than what we saw back in Step Two). Just so you know: I have no problem turning this Scale to Fit Media checkbox on if my image is going to shrink in size to fit the paper, but if turning that on would wind up increasing the size, I’ll hit the Cancel button and go to the Image Size dialog (under the Image menu) and resize it there, so I have control over the upsizing process (see page 128 in the book).

Step Four: While we’re talking about size; there’s another Print feature added back in Photoshop CS6 called Print Selected Area, and it gives you the ability to just print part of your image (so, it’s kind of like cropping the print without actually cropping the image itself). You do this in the Position and Size section of the dialog by turning on the Print Selected Area checkbox. When you turn this on, you’ll see little arrows appear around the corners of your image. Just click- and-drag these in toward your image, and as you do, it darkens the areas to be cropped away (as seen here, where I’ve dragged those arrows on the top left, top right, and lower left). Now, only the area that’s not darkened will actually wind up being printed on the page.

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Step Five: Another resizing feature added back in Photoshop CS6 is the ability to just click- and-drag on your photo to reposition and/ or resize it (I know what you’re thinking: “Couldn’t we always do that?” Believe it or not, no). To use this new feature, first make sure the Scale to Fit Media checkbox is turned off, and then click-and-drag the image around so you can reach a corner handle surrounding your image. Then, just click-and-drag a corner handle inward, and it resizes your image (kind of like Free Transform does, but you don’t have to hold the Shift key to keep the resizing proportional—it does that automatically). Here, I scaled the image down in size and positioned it where I wanted by just clicking-and-dragging it in the preview area. Now, before we go on to the next step, you’re probably wondering what that lined area around the outside edge of your paper is all about. That’s showing you where the margins are (the non-printable areas of your paper).

Step Six: If you want to be able to print all the way to the border (and have those margin lines and non-printable areas go away), all you have to do is to set your margins to 0 inches. You do this by clicking on the Print Settings button in the top right of the dialog (it’s shown circled here in red) to bring up your OS Print (PC: Printer Properties) dialog (shown here at the bottom). (Note: I use Epson printers, but if you have a Canon or HP, the dialog will have the same basic function, just in a different layout.) When you choose a paper size that is borderless (as shown here), you can now print to the edges of the paper (well, as long as your printer supports edge-to-edge printing, of course). Now, take a look at the preview—the margin area lines are gone.

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Step Seven: Okay, now let’s turn on our Color Man agement, so our prints will match what we see onscreen. In the Color Manage ment section, you’ll see that, by default, the Color Handling is set up to have your printer manage colors (instead of Photo shop). You really only want to choose this if you weren’t able to download any printer/paper profiles for your printer. Having your printer manage colors like this is your backup plan, not your first choice. But, today’s printers have gotten to the point that if you have to go with this, it still does a decent job (that wasn’t the case just a few years ago). Instead, I recommend that you choose Photoshop Manages Colors (as shown here). That way, it uses the color profile we downloaded earlier for our printer and paper combination, which will give us the best possible match.

Step Eight: Next, you’ll need to choose that printer/paper profile you downloaded and installed earlier. So, from the Printer Profile pop-up menu, choose the printer/ paper profile that matches your printer and paper (here, I’ll choose the profile for Ultra Premium Photo Paper Luster). Now, Photoshop and the printer know exactly which paper I’ll be printing on, and it’s optimized to give us the best possible color print on that printer using that paper (this is very important, because this sends a whole series of instructions to the printer, including everything from the amount of ink it should lay down, to the drying time of the paper, to the proper platen gap for the printer, and so on).

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Step Nine: Next, you’ll need to choose the Render ing Intent. There are four choices here, but only two I recommend: either Relative Colorimetric (which is the default setting) or Perceptual. Here’s the thing: I’ve had printers where I got the best looking prints with my Rendering Intent set to Percep tual, but currently, on my Epson Stylus Pro 3880, I get better results when it’s set to Relative Colorimetric. So, which one gives the best results for your printer? I recommend printing a photo once using Perceptual, then printing the same photo using Relative Colorimetric, and when you compare the two, you’ll know.

TIP: The Gamut Warning Isn’t for Us The Gamut Warning checkbox (beneath the preview area) is not designed for use when printing to a color inkjet (like we are here) or any other RGB printer. It warns you if colors are outside the printable range for a CMYK printing press, so unless you are outputting to a printing press, you can leave this turned off.

Step 10: Lastly, just make sure the Black Point Compensation checkbox is turned on (it should be by default) to help maintain more detail and color in the shadow areas. Now, click the Print Settings button in the top-right corner (we’re not quite done yet).

WARNING: If you’re printing to a color inkjet printer, don’t ever convert your photo to CMYK format (even though you may be tempted to because your printer uses cyan, magenta, yellow, and black inks). The conversion from RGB to CMYK inks happens within the printer itself, and if you do it first in Photoshop, your printer will attempt to convert it again in the printer, and your printed colors will be way off.

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Step 11: In your OS Print (PC: Printer Properties) dialog (again, I use Epson printers, so your dialog may look different), your printer will already be chosen in the Printer pop- up menu. On a PC, you’ll skip the Print dialog and just see your printer’s options. From the Layout pop-up menu, choose Print Settings (as shown here), so we can configure the printer to give us the best- quality prints.

WARNING: From this point on, what appears in the Layout pop-up menu is contingent on your particular printer’s options. You may or may not be able to access these same settings, so you may need to view each option to find the settings you need to adjust. If you’re using a Windows PC, you may have to click on the Advanced tab or an Advanced button to be able to choose from similar settings.

Step 12: First, from the Media Type pop-up menu, choose your paper type. Then, choose your Output Resolution from that pop-up menu (on a PC, choose Quality Options from the Print Quality pop-up menu, then use the slider to set the quality level). I use SuperPhoto - 2880 dpi, because I want to get the highest possible quality (little known fact: at 2880 dpi, it doesn’t use more ink—it just takes longer). Next, choose Off (No Color Management) from the Color Mode pop-up menu (on a PC, click on the Custom radio button and choose Off [No Color Adjustment] from the Mode pop-up menu). You want no color adjustment from your printer— you’re letting Photoshop manage your color instead. Now you’re ready to print, so click the Save (PC: OK) button to go back to Photoshop’s Print dialog, and hit the Print button to get prints that match your screen, as you’ve now color man- aged your photo from beginning to end.

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This is only the second edition of this book to include how to do soft proofing, because I don’t use—or recommend—soft proofing myself, and I don’t want to include techniques I don’t really use. But, I have had so many people ask me Soft Proofing about it, I felt I had to include it. Just know that my advice about this is simple: in Photoshop nothing beats a real proof. If you’re serious about making great prints, make a test print—soft proofing just gives you a hint of what it might look like. A test print is what it actually looks like. Okay, I’m off my soap box. Here’s how it’s done:

Step One: Start by downloading the free color profile from the company that makes the paper you’re going to be print ing on (see page 11 for where to get these and how to install them). Open the image you want to soft proof, then under the View menu, under Proof Setup, choose Custom (as shown here).

Step Two: When the Customize Proof Condition dialog appears, from the Device to Sim ulate pop-up menu, choose the color profile for the printer/paper combo you’ll be using (here, I’ve chosen an Epson Stylus Pro 3880 printing to Velvet Fine Art Paper). Next, choose the Rendering Intent (see page 19 for more on this), and make sure you leave Black Point Compensation turned on. Down in the Display Options (On-Screen) section, leave Simulate Paper Color and Simulate Black Ink both turned off. You can toggle the Preview checkbox on/off to see a before/after of the simulation of what your print might look like with that profile on that paper (though, of course, it can’t simulate how your sharpening might look on different papers, just the color. Kinda). Give it a try and then compare it with a real test print, and you’ll be able to determine if soft proofing is for you.

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Okay, what do you do if you followed all these steps—you’ve hardware calibrated your monitor, you’ve got the right paper profiles, and color profiles, and profiles What to Do If the of profiles, and so on, and you’ve carefully turned on every checkbox, chosen all the right color profiles, and you’ve done everything right—but the print still doesn’t Print Still Doesn’t match what you see onscreen? You know what we do? We fix it in Photoshop. Match Your Screen That’s right—we make some simple tweaks that get the image looking right fast.

Your Print Is Too Dark This is one of the most common prob- lems, and it’s mostly because today’s monitors are so much more incredibly brighter (either that, or you’re literally viewing your images in a room that’s too dark). Luckily, this is an easy fix and here’s what I do: Press Command-J (PC: Ctrl-J) to duplicate the Background layer, then at the top of the Layers panel, change the layer blend mode to Screen to make everything much brighter. Now, lower the Opacity of this layer to 25% and (this is key here) make a test print. Next, look at the print, and see if it’s a perfect match, or if it’s still too dark. If it’s still too dark, set the Opacity to 35% and make another test print. It’ll probably take a few test prints to nail it, but once you do, your problem is solved (by the way, this is a great thing to make into an action).

Your Print Is Too Light This is less likely, but just as easy to fix. Duplicate the Background layer, then change the layer blend mode to Multiply to make everything darker. Now, lower the Opacity of this layer to 20% and make a test print. Again, you may have to make a few test prints to get the right amount, but once you’ve got it, you’ve got it. Now, make that into an action (name it something like “Prep for Print”) and any time you print, just run that action first.

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Your Print Is Too Red (Blue, etc.) This is one you might run into if your print has some sort of color cast. First, before you mess with the image, press the letter F on your keyboard to put a solid gray background behind your photo, and then just look to see if the image onscreen actually has too much red. If it does, then press Command-U (PC: Ctrl-U) to bring up Hue/Saturation. From the second pop-up menu, choose Reds, then lower the Saturation amount to –20%, and then (you knew this was coming, right?) make a test print. You’ll then know if 20% was too much, too little, or just right. Once you make a few test prints and nail it, save those steps as an action and run it before you print each time.

Your Print Has Visible Banding The more you’ve tweaked an image, the more likely you’ll run into this (where the colors have visible bands, rather than just smoothly graduating from color to color. It’s most often seen in blue skies). There are two ways to deal with this: If you shot in RAW, make sure you keep the image in 16-bit mode (don’t have it down sam- ple to 8-bit when it leaves Camera Raw). Click the Workflow Options link beneath the Preview area in Camera Raw, and choose 16 Bits/Channel from the Depth pop-up menu. Stay in 16-bit through the entire printing process. If your original was a JPEG, then there’s no going back to a 16-bit original (and just converting to 16-bit mode does nothing), so instead try this: Go under the Filter menu, under Noise, and choose Add Noise. In the dialog, set the Amount to 4%, click on the Gaussian radio button, and turn on the Monochromatic checkbox. You’ll see the noise onscreen, but it disappears when you print the image (and usually, the banding disappears right along with it).

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For reasons known only to a secret society of Adobe engineers (who meet in underground catacombs buried deep below Adobe’s headquarters and lit solely by torches), they chose to remove the Contact Sheet feature from a previous version of Photoshop (CS5). I guess they assumed we’d use the PDF Contact Sheet Making Contact Sheets in Bridge, which can only mean they never actually tried it themselves. Thankfully, after the public stormed Adobe’s headquarters with axes and pitchforks, they (Yup, It’s Back!) brought Contact Sheet II back in CS6, and the balance of power has been restored to the kingdom. Here’s how to unleash its wrath:

Step One: To launch Contact Sheet II (the II part comes from the fact that this is the second version of this automated script, a big improvement over the first one. But, honestly when I heard Adobe was bringing this back, I was hoping for Contact Sheet III. Sigh), go under the File menu, under Automate, and choose Contact Sheet II (as shown here).

Step Two: This brings up the Contact Sheet II dialog, where you get to choose how your contact sheet will look. You start at the top by clicking on the Choose button and selecting which folder of images you want to create a contact sheet of. In the next section down, Doc ument, you get to choose the size and resolution of your contact sheet. In our example, we’re going to make a wide 10x8" sheet at a resolution of 240 ppi (pretty standard resolution for a color inkjet printer). I always leave the Flatten All Layers checkbox turned on, so when it’s done I’m not looking in my Layers panel and seeing 36 different layers, and that’s pretty much what you’ll get if you choose not to flatten all layers.

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Step Three: The next section down, Thumbnails, is where you choose how many columns and rows you want. In our example, we’re going to do six across, with three rows deep. I generally leave the Use Auto- Spacing checkbox turned on, because it has Photoshop do the math to figure out how to make the thumbnails in your contact sheet as large as possible. How ever, if you turn that checkbox off, you can type in what you’d like for your verti- cal and horizontal spacing (the only time I would do this is if I wanted more space along the top and sides. As you’ll see in the next step, this one has them spread out, so they’re really close to the side edges of the paper and pretty darn close to the top and bottom).

Step Four: The last section, at the bottom of the dialog, is pretty important (even though I don’t have it turned on here), and that is the option for the filename of each photo to appear below the thumbnail. If you’re using this as a proof sheet for a client, that’s pretty important. My only recommendation for this would be to use a smaller font size than the default 12-point, which always seems too large to me (especially if you have a long file name). Try 9- or 10-point, and I also would try a sans serif font, like Myriad Pro (rather than the default Minion Pro), simply because it looks better. Now, click the OK button up top, and in about 20 or 30 sec- onds, the contact sheet you see here appears. This particular one uses 18 photos (6 columns by 3 rows), but if your folder contains more than 18 photos, it just keeps making more contact sheets

until every photo is accounted for. SCOTT KELBY

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Photoshop Killer Tips

Using CC on a MacBook Pro? a duplicate or unlocked layer), then go Then you’ve probably experienced a weird under the Select menu, and choose Color thing where all of a sudden your screen Range. With the first Eyedropper tool on rotates, or your image suddenly zooms ProPhoto RGB, but Photoshop’s default the left (below the Save button), click on in (or out). It’s because the track pad on color space is sRGB, so since the two don’t the background once (not in the image a MacBook Pro supports Gestures, which match, it just puts that asterisk up top in itself, in the mask preview right there in are great for most things, but tend to drive case you care). the Color Range dialog), and then raise you insane when using Photoshop. You can the Fuzziness amount until it selects the turn off Gestures by pressing Command-K Tip for Finding Out Which Fonts background. That usually does most of the (PC: Ctrl-K) to bring up Photoshop’s Pref Look Best with Your Layout masking for me. Click OK, and now you can erences, then click on Interface (in the list This is a handy tip, especially if you’re do quickly paint in any missing parts using the on the left) and, in the Options section, ing poster layouts, and you want to find Brush tool set to paint in black. This gives turn off the Enable Gestures checkbox. just the right font to complement your you a mask of the background selection. photo. Go ahead and create some type, To make your mask a selection of your sub- then double-click on the Type layer’s ject, make sure the mask is selected, and thumbnail in the Layers panel to select press Command-I (PC: Ctrl-I) to Invert it.

Canceling an Adjustment Layer Edit If you’re working with an adjustment layer, and you want to cancel your edit and re turn to the adjustment defaults, click the curved arrow at the bottom of the Proper ties panel. If you don’t want the adjustment layer at all, you can quickly delete it by clicking on the Trash icon, also at the all your type. Now, click your cursor once bottom of the panel. in the Font field up in the Options Bar, and you can use the Up/Down Arrow Change Your Background keys on your keyboard to scroll through Canvas Color all the installed fonts on your system, By default, the area around your docu and your highlighted type changes live ment is a dark gray color, but you can onscreen as you do. choose any color you’d like by just Right- clicking anywhere on that gray canvas Refining Your Masks area and choosing Select Custom Color What’s That * Up in Your Using Color Range from the pop-up menu. Document’s Title Bar Mean? If you’ve created a layer mask, and want to That’s just letting you know that the image tweak it a bit, you can add the Color Range you’re working on has an embedded color feature as part of your tweaking arsenal. profile that’s different from the one you I use this to quickly select images that are chose in Photoshop (for example, you’d on a white background. Try this: Click on see this if you brought an image over from the Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom Lightroom, whose default color space is of the Layers panel (you’ll have to be on

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